Expansion
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| Proposed Portland Stadium |
With the push that is coming out of the Northeast and Portland to get an expansion baseball team, it looks like baseball will sooner than later expand to 32 teams. There is also noise being made north of the border in Montreal for a group to bring the Expos back. All of this is rumored to not be completed till after stadiums are figured out in Tampa and Oakland. Now no one goes to games a lot in either market but I can’t see Oakland losing their team. Tampa on the other hand should not be there and I’m projecting with the expansion into Portland and Montreal, that Nashville will be the other city to get a team.
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| Charlotte Baseball |
Charlotte and Vegas are also mentioned with Nashville as an expansion target. Vegas is getting the Raiders and have done well with the Golden Knights, but I don’t see them ever getting a baseball team. If they do that is the day that Pete Rose is let back into Baseball and inducted into the Hall of Fame. It’s down to Charlotte and Nashville. Both cities have an it factor, and either can edge each other out. For my example you can interchange either, but I’m going to use Nashville as my example.
Realignment
With the addition and movement of franchises, the divisions are going to get changed up and teams moving leagues. It’s happened before with the Astros and Brewers, and I’m not moving stalwarts.
Montreal will go back to the NL and get its NL East rivals back. Portland moves to the AL West and gets a close rival with Seattle. The Tampa franchise that moves to Nashville will jump to the National League to the SouthEast and get to play more regional rivals. Colorado moves to the AL and gets the DH in Coors Field and that thin air all the time now.
Each league would be Four 4 team divisions, regionally based and structured.
The schedule
Cut the season down from 162 to 154 games. There are roughly 26 weeks between first week of April and the last week of September, DO NOT START GAMES IN MARCH. It takes 22 weeks to play 154 games straight through, without byes or days off. 4 weeks off should be plenty of time, also with the All-Star break in there. (Schedule breakdown coming).
Teams would play more games within its own division than other opponents. Here is what the 154 game schedule breakdown would look like:
66 games vs Division opponents (22 vs each team)
72 games vs League opponents (3 game series vs each team Home and Home with all)
12 games vs a Cross League division. (2 Home 3-game series and 2 Away 3-game series)
4 games vs a Cross League rival (Cubs-White Sox / Yankees Mets) OR 2 2-game series vs Random Cross League teams (San Diego-Portland / San Diego-Seattle)
With the last point, there will be seasons where teams would have a natural geographic rival in the Cross League Division, then random fits would be slotted in.
Players would get 8 games cut off the season, and as Anthony Rizzo mentioned, the should take less (prorated) for playing fewer games.
The Playoffs
Each league would have 6 playoff teams. The 4 division winners and the next 2 best records in the league.
2 Best Division Champions in the league would get a bye.
2 Lesser Division Champions would get Home Field advantage in a best of 3 series vs the 2 Wild Card
The DS would still be best of 5, CS best of 7 and World Series best of 7.
Schedule of the Playoffs
With this the World Series would go into November more. But the schedule should be set to where it can be moved up if sweeps happen. If series would go the full 3 and 5 games in the first 2 rounds, they would be finished up within the first 14 days of the playoffs.
This all seems too easy for someone in a cube and with 3 kids to manage to figure out so FOR SURE MLB would not go this route. But laid out, this option for the league and fans would be a great fit.
